A very brave movie to make considering the hostile climate for debate

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2005)

I just saw this movie and thought it was very good. It has a futuristic sci-fi setting, a science based debate, i.e., the moral or ethical value of cloning, plenty of action scenes, and lots of suspense. I saw this with a room full of people and we all thought it was great. I'm left puzzled by the poor critical reception it received and the bad marketing campaign. Maybe the critics were just upset that this movie dealt with the question of whether cloning creates another human life and they don't want people to think in those terms. Or, as some people like to say, it's not a life if it's in a petri dish. Even SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) creates an embryo. When is it human? Are adult stem cells really inferior to embryonic stem cells? Or is it just more profitable to make a "product" (creating new organs or even new life with ESC derived from SCNT) rather than use existing adult stem cells to repair damaged organs. I don't believe you can patent adult stem cells, perhaps that's really why ESC are more "valuable" to some people. The movie makes mention more than once of the profit motive behind the clones.
The biggest advancement in ESC has been proved to be a fraud (see current headlines regarding S. Korean cloner.) I give the following link as a mere sample: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051227-041316-5554r but there are plenty more stories with more information.
By contrast, every time there is an advancement with adult stem cells, they mysteriously drop the "adult" to give the impression that the (adult) stem therapy has something to do with ESC when it doesn't. The reality is that stem cell breakthroughs touted in actual medical therapy have been achieved with adult stem cells, not ESC; yet ESC research gets more attention and more money. See following link: http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=10284 This movie inspires debate, and that's a good thing!